Thinking About 1776 While Living Through 2026: A Q&A with Historian Andrew Shankman

Andrew Shankman, professor and chair of history at Rutgers University–Camden and president of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, will give a talk at LSU on October 21, called “Thinking About 1776 While Living Through 2026.”

What is your talk about?

“In 2026, we are living through some very powerful and often angry denunciations of how historians have talked about the American Revolution. The charge is that historians have hijacked it for purposes contrary to American values. I’ll talk about how I think about the Revolution, and why I disagree with many of those characterizations of what history is, what it’s for and how it’s done.”

Critics often call this “revisionism.” What do you make of that word?

“For me, revisionism is almost a synonym for doing history. People were arguing about and revising the American Revolution during the American Revolution. But revisionism should always open up conversation rather than close it down.”

Can you give an example?

“In 1908, Carl Becker argued the Revolution was as much a conflict among Americans about who would rule as a fight with the British. In 1926, J. Franklin Jameson called it ‘a stream that burst its banks and spread upon the land.’ A century ago, two establishment founders of the modern historical profession were not afraid to acknowledge the true complexity of the Revolution, and we shouldn’t be afraid to either.”

What will you focus on?

“Mostly a statement from a Philadelphia newspaper, The Aurora, from 1801. Its editor, William Duane, complained that people were already talking about the Revolution while silencing the revolutionary expedients used to achieve it: committees, the destruction of tea, the seizure and redistribution of loyalist property. What does it tell us about the culture the Revolution produced?”

Many historians prefer “commemorate” to “celebrate” in 2026. Where do you land?

“A lot of my colleagues are uncomfortable with the word celebrating. I’ll say celebration. The Revolution wasn’t controlled by any one group. It became much messier and more complicated than the people who set it in motion expected. If revisionism opens up debate, I’m very comfortable celebrating how 13 colonies came together to seek independence.”

How did you come to study this period?

“My first serious paper, as an undergraduate, was on the Jefferson–Hamilton debates over the Constitution and the Bank of the United States. Thirty years later, it became a book. In graduate school, studying with John Murrin, I realized my interests had a much longer history, reaching back to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England: governors and governed, subjecthood becoming citizenship, economic growth. That was profoundly exciting to me.”

Why are you coming to Baton Rouge?

“LSU’s Sue Marchand is president of the American Historical Association this year, something she and LSU should be very proud of because it’s one of the oldest, most important and most significant professional organization of historians in the world. Sue is very interested in civic education, and LSU is assembling people from different disciplines and periods for a workshop ahead of the annual AHA meeting in New Orleans in January [to include a jazz plenary organized by LSU Boyd Professor of Piano and Jazz Studies Willis Delony]. Each of us chose a document that raises broad questions of civics and could be used in the classroom. It’s part of a wider effort in the humanities to address the atrophying of our civic muscles.”

Shankman’s talk will take place at 4 p.m. on October 21 in the Grand Salon of the Ogden Honors College, as part of the Department of History’s Modern History Colloquium. It is free and open to the public. The “Historical Thinking and Civic Education” workshop at LSU on October 22–24 is sponsored by the Alliance for Civics in the Academy and the American Historical Association. LSU’s Suzanne Marchand (History) and James Stoner (Political Science) are directors, with Michael DiResto as co-organizer.